Those condemned to death were shackled and led from the dank Old Gaol to the courtyard where the punishment was administered. The last person to be publicly hanged there was Rhine Johnson, who can sometimes be seen doing the dead man’s walk to the gallows. Inside the prison, the sounds of prisoners sometimes echo throughout the empty cells - the mutter of conversation, the clank of chains...

- drive off the beast of fear -

It had all begun normally enough: he had rolled over and fallen out of bed, so entangled that it had taken him ten minutes to get himself out. Unfortunately for Jasper, the fall hadn't been that far, because his bed had at some point during the night (midnight? it made a better story if it was midnight!) his bed had broken, as under the sudden strain of a huge weight. That wasn't just a metaphorical statement, either. His bed had suddenly been supporting a huge weight (quite far indeed from the skinny teenager who had gone to sleep on it the night before). At some point during the night - okay, okay, at midnight, probably - Jasper had gained a significant amount of height and general body mass, as well as a considerable amount of hair. Okay... fur.

Yes, Jasper had woken up looking like a beast. A capital-B Beast, as it happened. A Beauty-and-the Beast.

For the first five seconds (which would all be edited out later), it had given him a fright. After that though, he started to realise that this was an incredibly cool occurrence. Seriously! He was like nine feet tall or something now! Unfortunately, his attempts to fly were going nowhere, which was putting a bit of a damper on his otherwise good mood. What was Jasper without his ability to soar through the air like a boss? Well, he was ready to find out. Considering the amount of fur he had at the moment, he didn't bother to get dressed (nothing would have fit him anyway) and set out to discover the world. His dormitory was in absolute chaos, but since no one interesting was around Jasper moved on, experimenting with walking on four legs and two. It was a lot harder to balance on two than it looked, so he just ended up padding around on all fours... okay, well, that turned into gambolling pretty soon. Not even turning into a beast could keep a good Jasper mood down for long!

What did affect his mood was the fact that people kept running away from him. He wasn't scary! Come on, he was fluffy! How could anything fluffy be scary? Jasper shook his head as another friend took off at the sight of him bouncing towards them. What was wrong with everyone today? Couldn't they recognise the wonderfulness of Jasper when they saw it? Annoyance (and a little bit of sadness at everyone not wanting to talk to him) dampening his gambolling, he walked into the dining hall, hoping that they'd put out an excellent Halloween themed breakfast. He was not disappointed: there were even waffles shaped like bats! Everything smelled wonderful, making his stomach growl hopefully. Not that many people were around, possibly because of the mass freak out that was happening all over the castle, but Jasper did spot one person who he was sure wouldn't run away from him.

"Rori!" he called, pleased to hear that his voice sounded more or less normal, although it had a depth and growlyness that he usually could not hope to achieve. Approaching his friend slowly, so that she didn't think it would be funny to run away, he smelled the food on her plate. Mmmm.... delicious! She had better share some of that with him! "Hey, hey, Rori, guess what!" he exclaimed, stopping by her chair and unfolding to stand on his hind legs. It was getting a little easier to balance that way the more used to this body he became. "Guess, guess, guess!" And then, as she opened her mouth to give him a response (even if that response was 'it's kind of obvious Jasper, and also you're making the table shake'), he blurted out the answer, unable to keep it to himself, "I'm the Beaaaasstttttt!"

Whatever reaction Jasper had expected, that certainly wasn't it. Then again, to be fair, there was no reason why anyone should have expected Rori the Red Indian princess to turn, quite suddenly, into a rather large tiger. Not that large from Jasper's newly-enhanced point of view, but still large enough to be taken seriously. This was something completely new. Obviously the chaos that had permeated Nemare Academy's halls today had not passed her over. Jasper couldn't think of anyone who could transform into a tiger offhand but it stood to reason that if people could turn into lions and fish, they could also turn into tigers - and now Rori could do it, too. This was turning out to be a really cool day, in a really weird way.

"Shit. Shit shit. Not again."

When she roared at him, Jasper was startled to find a very loud roar welling up in his chest and exploding out of him. Okay, cool had just graduated to awesome! He patted his chest, getting his breath back as the fearsome noise evaporated into the air around them. If anyone was going to outroar anyone, it was totally going to be him. How awesome was that?! Jasper cleared his throat and shook his head, making a mental note to remember to practise some roaring once he got his friend out of her tiger costume and back into paying attention to how brilliant this day of total chaos was. "I mean, um, what not again?" he asked, returning to all fours so that she didn't have to strain her neck looking up at his face. "You could turn into a tiger before? That's amazing!" He paused, just for a beat, and then pouted as much as his beastly face would allow him to. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Of course, Jasper expected almost without really thinking about it that he ought to be informed the minute anything cool happened to any of his friends. How else could he celebrate with them? Besides, it was kind of special to be among the first to hear a piece of news... and as far as Jasper was concerned, he deserved special! Anyway, the point was, if Rori's tiger thing wasn't new, then she could expect one enormous sulky beast on her hands (paws?) for the rest of the day. Jasper didn't get upset with his friends for very long, it was true - he loved them and being around them too much - but when he did he could be a right pain in the rear about it. "Look, I'm a beast - the Beast - and I told you first thing, straight off," he said reasonably, or as reasonably as anything could be said through a mouth of enormous fangs. As he sat back on his haunches like a dog to scratch one of his ears with a hind leg (super cool, and totally worth not quite being able to fit through doors like this) his stomach gurgled impatiently. Jasper might want to get to the bottom of this, but his hungry stomach just wanted to get to the bottom of a plate of food.